White
Save your search and find it in your favorites
Save your search to find it quickly
Saved search
Your search is accessible from the favorites tab > My favorite searches
Unsaved search
A problem occurred
Morning Rose Symphony
Hrach Baghdasaryan
Painting - 30 x 24 x 2 cm Painting - 11.8 x 9.4 x 0.8 inch
€191
Strength. Rebirth. Purify.
Maria Matveyeva
Painting - 100 x 100 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 39.4 x 0.8 inch
€6,900
Nous sommes la littérature
Miguel Guía
Sculpture - 39.5 x 11.5 x 10 cm Sculpture - 15.6 x 4.5 x 3.9 inch
€1,270
Shine Your Light
Lena Bera-Pancini
Painting - 90 x 90 x 90 cm Painting - 35.4 x 35.4 x 35.4 inch
€1,900
Perfect Combination - Diptych
Kat Zhivetin
Painting - 70 x 50 x 1.5 cm Painting - 27.6 x 19.7 x 0.6 inch
€1,277
Late Night IV
Ruslana Levandovska
Painting - 35.6 x 27.9 x 0.5 cm Painting - 14 x 11 x 0.2 inch
€2,397
Feeling your wind
Francesca Borgo
Painting - 40 x 40 x 1.8 cm Painting - 15.7 x 15.7 x 0.7 inch
€594
Minimalist Landscape IX
Behshad Arjomandi
Painting - 100.1 x 81 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 31.9 x 0.8 inch
€1,093
Place Within Reach 26.
Petr Strnad
Painting - 70.2 x 50 x 0.1 cm Painting - 27.6 x 19.7 x 0 inch
€450
Rimbaud, Boulevard Saint-Michel
Ernest Pignon-Ernest
Print - 80 x 60 cm Print - 31.5 x 23.6 inch
€1,000
Neue Kammern Enfilade IV. From the Neue Kammern Enfilades series
Celia Rogge
Photography - 101.6 x 152.4 x 0.3 cm Photography - 40 x 60 x 0.1 inch
€7,911
Crock de toi royal - ultra white
Ninu
Sculpture - 30 x 30 x 17 cm Sculpture - 11.8 x 11.8 x 6.7 inch
€4,500
On the verge of a nervous breakdown
Sebastian Picker
Painting - 60 x 60 x 1 cm Painting - 23.6 x 23.6 x 0.4 inch
€3,500
Peace, Rest in Peace
Sebastian Picker
Painting - 40 x 40 x 1 cm Painting - 15.7 x 15.7 x 0.4 inch
€3,000
Speckled Crest
Drew Doggett
Photography - 45.7 x 68.6 x 0.3 cm Photography - 18 x 27 x 0.1 inch
€1,822
Porsche 911 Turbo S
Angélique Dufossé
Painting - 50 x 150 x 2 cm Painting - 19.7 x 59.1 x 0.8 inch
€2,490
Forest convergence blue sky
Alvaro Petritoli
Painting - 100 x 140 x 3 cm Painting - 39.4 x 55.1 x 1.2 inch
€9,360
Silent heights III
Alvaro Petritoli
Painting - 124 x 154 x 3 cm Painting - 48.8 x 60.6 x 1.2 inch
€8,770
The Song of Love
Yasna Godovanik
Painting - 100 x 70 x 2 cm Painting - 39.4 x 27.6 x 0.8 inch
€1,250
L'arbre qui cache la forêt
Gris De Garance
Painting - 30 x 25 x 1 cm Painting - 11.8 x 9.8 x 0.4 inch
€100
Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc (Limited Edition Estate Stamped Print)
Slim Aarons
Photography - 152.4 x 101.6 cm Photography - 60 x 40 inch
€3,690
Aigrette en Camargue derrière des barbelés
Lionel le Jeune
Painting - 37 x 55 x 2 cm Painting - 14.6 x 21.7 x 0.8 inch
€1,300
Concave
Nicolas Sanchez
Fine Art Drawings - 45.7 x 50.8 x 3.8 cm Fine Art Drawings - 18 x 20 x 1.5 inch
€5,753
Impossible behaviour-11
Galya Popova
Fine Art Drawings - 90 x 60 x 0.2 cm Fine Art Drawings - 35.4 x 23.6 x 0.1 inch
€1,600
L'esprit incisif
Emmanuelle Vroelant
Painting - 80 x 80 x 3 cm Painting - 31.5 x 31.5 x 1.2 inch
€3,600
Channel Blooming Bear
Blooming Bears
Sculpture - 50 x 33 x 23 cm Sculpture - 19.7 x 13 x 9.1 inch
€5,753
Maeduep. Dragonfly Wall decoration
WKND Lab
Design - 160 x 49.8 x 39.9 cm Design - 63 x 19.6 x 15.7 inch
€6,501
Oceani Mentali n°4
Luca Izzo
Photography - 50 x 70 x 0.4 cm Photography - 19.7 x 27.6 x 0.2 inch
€350
Ondine
Eric Sanger Monteros
Photography - 60 x 110 x 2 cm Photography - 23.6 x 43.3 x 0.8 inch
€3,500
Etel - série Paysage de bord de mer de Bretagne
Jacqueline Clermont
Painting - 30 x 60 x 2 cm Painting - 11.8 x 23.6 x 0.8 inch
€340
White
In physics, white is the sum of all the colours. To the human eye, white appears to be the total absence of colour. Amongst artists, white and its many uses in art are continuously evolving and challenging those who would embrace them. Is white, then, a non-colour, or an enhancer of colours? Intangible or material? Absence or excess?
Since Antiquity, white has been appreciated for its symbolic value. In Ancient Greece, where they would paint their statues, it was a sign of incompletion, whereas the Romans believed it showed pomp and imperialist virtue. With the rise of Christianity, white was used in opposition to black in order to emphasise moral dichotomies: the pure, divine white against the darkness. In some cases, however, white was used to show sickness or death, most notably in the pallid representations of the skeletal, crucified Christ.
In the Renaissance white was used to sublimate faces and backgrounds. Da Vinci even based his sfumato technique on the soft transition from light into darkness. Throughout the history of painting, white was considered precious for its ability to reflect light. It attracts the gaze even when used in the tiniest quantities, and illuminates the subject, drawing out stunning contrasts as seen in the works of Rembrandt, or in Vermeer's famous Girl with the Pearl Earring.
With the rise of Impressionism, white was used as the brightest tone amongst shades of grey. While Manet produced canvases which were forerunners to monochromes, including The Reader, which was almost pure white, Monet delivered a stunning gradient of whites whilst recreating the snow at his home in Giverny. The first true white monochrome appeared with the arrival of Malevitch's White Square on a White Background. The artist said 'I have broken the blue boundary of colour limits, and come out into the white'.
Modernists were equally passionate about white and valued it incredibly highly. Miro in particular questioned the status of white on canvases. In his painting Woman, Bird and Star white is in parts boldly painted, but is also distinctive for its absence around the star. Picasso, on the other hand, explored white in conjunction with his famous coloured periods. Piero Manzoni became famous thanks to his 'achromatic' paintings, a series of canvases produced exclusively in shades of white. Moving into the 20th century, white became synonymous with minimalist abstraction. For artists like Kandinsky, white was a cosmic colour, associated with a spiritual search for the absolute, guiding the artists as he seek to express his emotions.
Today, white remains an ever popular subject. Roman Opalka made his name creating a series of white numbers of a white background, while Daniel Arsham reinvents white walls in galleries by letting his artwork drip down onto them. White is a colour with multiple symbolic interpretations. The colour of divinity or humility; of purity and immaculate, of emptiness and absence, but always colour. If blue has Klein and red has Rothko, it appears that no artist has yet succeeded in fully mastering white – but maybe you'll find them in our selection!